Taliban murder leading Afghan female rights activist
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Independent Minds
Taliban gunmen murdered one of Afghanistan’s leading female rights activists yesterday, as she stood outside her home. In the latest blow against women’s rights, two men on a motorbike shot Sitara Achakzai in the southern city of Kandahar.
Officials said the attack happened in broad daylight. The Taliban have claimed responsibility. Friends said Mrs Achakzai was returning from a provincial council meeting; her assassins were lying in wait nearby.
“This cold-blooded assassination puts in question the direction that Afghanistan is heading,” warned Wenny Kusuma, the director of the United Nations Development fund for Women in Afghanistan. “There is no respect for the rule of law.”
Earlier this year Mrs Achakzai was instrumental in organizing a nationwide sit-in of more than 11,000 women, in seven provinces. The women ‘prayed for peace’ to mark International Women’s Day.
Her death has sent shockwaves through Afghanistan’s human rights community. It comes after Mrs Achakzai suffered shrapnel wounds to her face in a Taliban suicide attack on Kandahar’s provincial council building that left 13 dead a fortnight ago.
Yesterday was the first time she had returned there since. A friend said she went to say farewell: frightened for her safety she was to leave Afghanistan on May 1.
“She had a ticket to leave,” said a close friend and colleague in Kandahar, who asked not to be named. “She was going to take a few months to see what happened, to see whether things get better or worse.”
Mrs Achakzai was living in Germany until 2004, but decided to come back and serve Afghanistan with her husband, who taught chemistry in Kandahar University, the friend said.
President Hamid Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali is the head of the council. The Taliban have offered 200,000 Pakistani rupees, around £1,700, to anyone who murders a councillor.
The murder comes just days after President Hamid Karzai was forced to order a review of new legislation which the UN said legalised rape. Fury over the law, which President Barack Obama called “abhorrent,” highlighted the desperate state of women’s rights in Afghanistan.
In September last year, Afghanistan’s most prominent female police officer, Lt-Col Malalai Kakar, was shot in a similar attack in Kandahar. The Taliban also claimed responsibility.
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Comments
What brave "warriors" these mongrels are, afraid to fight the soldiers who would kick their ass, but only too happy to beat up, rape and kill defenceless females.
They are pigs, rotting from the inside out with cowardice, using terror to get their own way. I hope these retarded, small brained individuals are caught, wrapped in pig skin, buried alive in a pig sty, to rot forever in torment.
SCUM, and all those who support them are SCUM and COWARDS.
This woman was braver than any of the Taliban animals.
Afghanistan was a stable country in which men and women lived in harmony in the securaity of each having a mutually supportive gender role.
The "murder" of this stooge and lacky is a direct result of Western Powers interfering in Afghanistan to steal its oil and trying to impose corrupt destabalising Western values. Once they leave all will be at peace again.
I can only conclude that you are utterly biased. Afghanistan has no real oil resources, and even if we were there for that 'oil', don't you think the sheer cost of such massive military operations kind of neutralise such daft arguments? And to think that the current unrest is due to western influence is just plain idiotic. The Taliban murdered and raped anyone they wanted to between the early 90's and 2001, the country was divided by race and religion. To put across the idea that Afghanistan was a stable and peaceful place only highlights your own stupidity.
Unfortunately for you, most of the rest of the world sees you as the dumb barbarian. Consider your silly claim that the West is stealing Afghan oil. FYI, Afghanistan DOESN'T HAVE OIL YOU MENTAL MIDGET! Do you realize when you post such ludicrous claims it only makes people pity the shallow limits of your knowledge of the world. If you want to be anti-west and actually have people take you seriously, you really need to go back to school and start learning about Afghan history and culture so you can cite facts rather than your comical routine of Afghanistan having oil. And by school, I don't mean that madrassa where you memorize the Koran word for word front to back. That's not an education, and you're a living example of that.
You are sick, stupid, and need to turn in your license to think. You look in the mirror and realize you are an ugly, subhuman, don't you? That's why you feel threatened when women have choices--choosing not to be around the trash that is your kind.
Backward, you justify this animal existence with your sh*t rag book. What kind of vomit of the Earth needs Heaven to give him virgin women? Disgusting. So the women obey Shitia law and what do they get for their reward? To be a sex slave for a terrorist in Heaven?!
Stonings, beheadings? That's your peaceful gutter religion? Don't even mention how faithful to God you are--He doesn't hear the words from the filth of the Earth.
YO HILL there is no such thing as a moderate Taliban!
WHY do these men hate their Mothers and Daughters?
There is NOTHING in the Koran that gives these men the right to treat females worse than dirt.
The Taliban have just created a martyr for Afghan women to look up to.